Dedication of New Stanbrook Abbey Church

On 6 September, the Abbey Church at the new site ot Stanbrook Abbey in Wass was dedicated, on the same day as Bishop Ullathorne consecrated the original abbey church in Worcestershire in 1871.

Bishop Terence Drainey of Middlesbrough blessed the new church and Cardinal Vincent preached the homily, in which he recalled the last Mass at the old abbey church in 1999, ahead of the move by the Benedictine sisters to the new site in Yorkshire.

Cardinal Vincent spoke about the Rule of their founder and its reference to the Liturgy as the 'Opus Dei', explaining: 'In the Liturgy we proclaim the name of the Lord until he comes again. We stand in prayer, giving voice to the whole of creation as it acknowledges its creator and its hope. In the liturgy we come to be recreated, filled again and again with the Holy Spirit, through the death and resurrection of the Lord, made present again on this altar.'

He went on to speak about the encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well as 'the pattern of every evanglisation: a true meeting with Christ'.

'Christ is the truth in whom we must worship,' he continued. 'He is the giver of the Spirit, who alone lifts up our frail flesh. He is the one whom we come to meet, day after day, here in this house of prayer.'

The Cardinal also spoke about the challenge of 'concretedly lived charity' in this Year of Consecrated Life and the prophetic role that religious communities have in demonstrating this in the way they live: 'Only in concretely lived charity will our seemingly endless capacity for division be overcome and the peace for which we all long be found. To this you are to be witnesses, prophets in our troubled world.'

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